>> do the white house and big business have something in common? both understand the complexities of hiring people. this is "now." >> mother jones washington bureau chief david corn, retired army captain and author of "the other wesmore" a living rainbow over this desk, wes moore. time assistant managing editor rhonna, and msnbc political analyst jonathan altar of bloomberg news. with the news that labor secretary solis is stepping down president obama has another cabinet post to fill. it is another opportunity to nominate someone who is not a white male. an unfortunate theme of his picks thus far. as ruth marcus writes in "the washington post" it's mad men goes to washington except peggy's leaving." new york congressman charlie

rangel was none too pleased this morning. >> it's embarrassing as hell. we've been through all this with mitt romney, and we were very hard on mitt romney with his women binders. >> it is worth noting that this trend is not consistent with the president's record. currently eight women serve in cabinet level positions, making up 35% of his team. less than one-quarter of george w. bush's cabinet was made up of women. that merely mirrors of percentage of high level women appointed to federal positions outside the white house. 35% under president obama, and 25% under george w. bush. equally worth noting both of president obama's supreme court appointments were women. perhaps the real question about diversity within the president's inner circle isn't biological, but intellectual. the washington post's ezra cline notes that president obama hasn't named an outsider to his economic team since his initial 2009 picks. in a little over an hour the president will nominate jack lu for treasury secretary, a man who previously served as a budget director and currently as his chief of staff. cline writes, "can it really be

the case that after four very difficult years there is nothing the white house would gain in its second term by bringing in outsiders with fresh experience, different relationships, and a new perspective." david corn, there has always been a lot of talk about the ins lears about the obama white house. >> yes. >> i mean, i do think we're kind of like at halftime here and the white males have run up the score so far in the first two quarters. there's still a few more quarters to play in termdz of putting his team together, and given the round of criticism or observations that's coming this we week. >> is -- are you surprised that the white house isn't pushing back more on this?

i for one sort of am, but insofar as dave corn has a football analogy, maybe that is the case, that this is just -- is he leading off with the guys that he likes, and we're going to get to a more diverse cabinet later on in the game. do you think it's an issue for him? >> i think it's not necessarily an issue. here's why the administration hasn't pushed back. they know that when all is said and done, this won't be the reflection of what the second term of president obama is going to look like. i think you can look at the history of where the administration was and people think that just now the timing and the roll-out probably hasn't been best because we have now gone three in a row, now four in a row. >> it should be noted that susan rice was really president obama's probably first choice. >> so blame john mccain for these problems. >> they did push back, actually. they released a picture after the "new york times" put that picture out of all these men advising the president on the budget, and they put out another picture just yesterday of a bunch of the senior women staffers in the white house --

valerie jarrett, lissa -- nancy andrew parrell, who is a chief of staff, and number of other women. it's not true that he is surrounded by men. voo. >> there is another diversity issue that has not to do with gender or race or ethnicity, but diversity of opinion, and one of the things that i'm interested in, for example, in the treasury secretary position, jack lew, you know, this is somebody who is a safe pair of hands. it's somebody who is not going to rock the boat, and i wonder if that doesn't represent kind of the hunkering down economically in a way kind of a saying, you know, we're not going to take on any new big topics. we're going to have to be battling the same -- >> you interpret that as hunkering because i think a lot of other people say -- and the "wall street journal" has plenty to say on this. team of liberal loyalists they write. "as budget director and chief of staff in the obama white house, mr. lew has been the president's most partisan and implaquable negotiator. he no doubt reflects mr. obama,

but no one should think he'll emerge at his own in the treasury." >> i think you want pick garrett ginslerin. if you wanted to make big changes in jobs and investment, it would have been a more -- >> the first fight, though, is taking on congress, and that's -- >> that's a point of making. >> and one of the reasons they don't like him, so many republicans, that in 2011 we had the budget fight then. jack lew really snookerred them, and structuring them in a way that were protective to all of the president's priorities. if that's what we're going -- we seem to be in a place where getting washington to function at a very basic level is the end game. people have to be judged not just on where they fit on rainbow but what they're like as public servants, and jack lew is a tremendously talented public servant. he has always protected the vulnerable. going back to his days for tip

o'nei o'neill, he knows the budget better than anyone in washington. that's one of the reasons the republicans insisted john boehner insisted that don't bring lew. he knew the budget much better than anyone else. he ran circles around them, but in defense of vulnerable people. >> in addition to that, i think it also shows what's happened in recent history. if you look at the treasury secretary pick for the most recent presidents who have had two terms, you look at the selection of james baker under president reagan. you look at the selection of bob rubin under bill clinton. the selection of john snow and hank paulson and now jack lew, there are two things that all of them have? common. the one is they're all close to the president in terms of ideology and thoughts. the second thing is they essentially compound on what the president ran on. if you look in the case of baker, reagan, reagan was one of the key people in charge of the budget office in 1981, and then reagan makes him his treasury secretary. same thing with bob rubin. the issue that the president ptsdz to tackle are domestic

debt issues. he wants to get -- he wants to get this. in his opinion there's no better person sitting in treasury to tackle that than jack lew. >> i do want to point out one thing as we talk about diversity, and we had jen saki on the show yesterday. she said while the president has a very diverse -- >> a woman who works for president obama. >> and she made the point that we have a pipeline problem. if you actually look at sort of where women are at -- we did a little researching as we are want to do on this television program -- 50% -- 50.8% of the country is female, but they're only 18.9% of congress is female. that's up. that's still 19% basically. only 4.2% of fortune 1,000 ceos, rona, are women. when we talk about why are the women who are there -- why is the word deputy in front of their names? it's because in top level positions, i mean, you still have a problem in this country and around the world with women in leadership positions. >> it's interesting.

the ceo numbers are particularly striking, and i think that that represents the fact that there just has not been enough culture shift in corporate america. i mean, women's roles and men's roles, frankly, have changed quite a lot in terms of work, life, home balance. corporate culture really hasn't changed to reflect that, and i think that's one of the reasons you see so many women starting their own businesses. it's not that they're not succeeding and they're not entrepreneurial. they're saying we cannot exist. it's a ridged structure. that set -- i think there are two factors that could help to really make some big changes in the next ten or 20 years, and one is that women are slowly taking on the majority of purchasing power. they're going to be the top earners within the next decade. also, i think that a generation of mostly male executives at the top of the four fortune 5 companies will be stepping down, and there will be a new generation of women and men that want to have lives, and they can work anywhere. >> if you look at some fields in particular, like, you know, defense field and high finance, the numbers are even worse in terms of split between men and

women. if are you trying to get people who want to be, you know, head of the defense department or treasury, you have a smaller pull, and if you are looking for ex-senators who used to be republicans, then your pull is really small. >> can i just say one thing, though? as we talk about the president's team of advisors, i was reminded that larry summers, as president of harvard university, basically said that women are biologically inferior to men in math and science and still made it in there. if we talk about a culture of male dominance, i mean, it is worth noting that that guy was in charge of economic policy for president obama, having said that about women, which should in some ways as a woman i will say be an automatic disqualifier. >> women did have to xwlan about this. in my earlier book, rye counted this scene where they had a dinner with the president, and they said, you know, this is a boy's club.

now -- and rahm emanuel, and the answer was, well, they treat everybody this way. you know, they treat everybody horribly. what happened afterward was the women continued to meet and continued to have dinner, and they called it our basketball game, you know, because the basketball game that the president was having did not have too many women in it. you know, it's an issue that they're sensitive about. i don't think it's fair to say that, you know, they have kept women out because his closest advisor is valley jarrett, and nancy and epa rl has been an important part of this administration. she doesn't get any press, but -- >> that's also part of it. the people who find themselves conveniently in front of the camera are often men, although i will say 40% of our panel is female today. we have to go to break, but after we come back vice president joe biden invites members of the nra and others for talks on gun violence, but does the white house need broad consensus for reform, or just the stroke of the president's

pen? we will discuss options with one of the people involved in the discussions, colin goddard of the brady campaign next on "now." ...so as you can see, geico's customer satisfaction is at 97%. mmmm tasty. and cut! very good. people are always asking me how we make these geico adverts. so we're taking you behind the scenes. this coffee cup, for example, is computer animated. it's not real. geico's customer satisfaction is quite real though. this computer-animated coffee tastes dreadful. geico. 15 minutes could save you 15 % or more on car insurance. someone get me a latte will ya, please? or treat gas with these after you get it. now that's like sunblock before or sun burn cream later. oh, somebody out there's saying, now i get it!

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more guns are not the answer. let me be clear, freedom is not a handgun on the hip of every teacher, and security should not mean a guard posted outside every classroom. [ applause ] >> governors andrew cuomo from new york and dan malloy from connecticut made gun control a priority in their state of the state addresses last night, but as they push for gun safety as the legacy of the tragic newtown shooting, what does the nra want? according to politico's mike allen, more members and more money. nra membership is up by 100,000 in the past 18 days to 4.2 million people. the group told politico they want to break five million by the end of this debate. perhaps they haven't seen their latest polling. since the nra press conference featuring wayne la pierre calling for armed patrols in schools amid protest signs reading the nra has blood on its hands, a new poll shows the gun group's favorability has seen a ten-point negative swing.

when have gun rights advocates cared about public perception? despite the recent shootings and bipart sfwlan calls for reform in the nation's gun laws, a coalition of firearms groups are pushing forward with gun appreciation day on the mlk holiday weekend this year. today vice president joe biden's gun violence task force is holding martin luther king reply meeting, including one currently underway with sportsmen and wildlife interest groups. later biden has invited the nra and wal-mart as well. the task force is talking about a range of responses to the newtown shooting including circumventing congress if they won't play ball. >> the president is going to take a look at executive action that can be taken. we don't know what that is yet. we're compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and all the rest of the cabinet members. >> south carolina republican congressman jeff duncan isn't having any of that. in a statement he wrote, "the founding fathers never envisioned executive orders being used to restrict our constitutional rights.

we live in a republic, not a dictatorship." the drudge report didn't miss a step posting white house threatens executive orders on guns with photos of hitler and stalin. joining us now from washington is a survivor of the have virginia tech shooting and assistant director of federal legislation for the brady campaign, colin goddard, thanks for joining us, as always. >> thanks for having me. >> we know you've been ingauged in these talks with the vice president. my first question is how are they going, how optimistic are you that we are going to see real and substantive reform on the nation's gun laws? >> our meeting yesterday with the vice president was awesome. it was heyly motivational to come out of that seeing such a commitment to a comprehensive look at gun policy and gun violence in america. you know, i think -- everyone, my colleagues, and all the other victims and survivors that were with me yesterday left that meeting elated, but we understand that it's just the beginning. you know, we say don't kick back and think now, you know, you don't have any work to do.

now is the work that gets tough. is he putting that together. you know, packages, legislative packages, ideas for executive actions. you know, ideas for programs that change the culture of violence and culture of guns in america that ultimately then will say, look, we need the american people to get behind this if we want to see this become a reality. that's now our job. >> colin, i think after newtown there was a sense that maybe the cult could come together and that gun owners who are members of the mra would understand the need for some sort of commonsense reform here. yet, it seems like the nra has dug in its heels. those opposed to gun reforms are ever more ob stpt stinent. i want to play this sound from alex jones on piers morgan talking about gun control. >> hitler took the guns. stalin took the guns. mao took the guns. castro took the guns. hugo chavez took the guns, and i'm here to tell you 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms. doesn't matter how many let mings you get on the street begging for them to have their guns taken?

we will not relinquish them. do you understand? that's why you are going to fail, and the establishment knows no matter how much propaganda the republic will rise again when you attempt to take our guns. >> aside from being a terrifying piece of sound to play for the country, i also want to draw attention to the fact that there is no room -- there is no room for compromise in what is being said there, colin, so can the vice president do this without the support of the nra? we need to speak about the leadership. not their member hit. side-by-side of this meeting with the nra leadership, we're having many nra members and gun owners greater capacity coming to us and saying the nra doesn't represent me. they saw that press conference right after the shooting in newtown, and said this is not whate think should be done in this country. we're having so many people come to us and saying we support you. background checks makes sense. that's not going to stop me fre owning a gun. the realities of what people

like alex jones scream about on tv couldn't really be further from the truth of what we're actually discussing with the administration and people on capitol hill and the average american citizen who is calling on us to make sure something gets done. >> the average american says -- and i want to open this up to our foulkes in new york -- the average voice the americans is something that's often lost. as someone who has serveed in iraq and owned and held guns, you have experience in the military. there is a culture in america around guns that is actually very, very different from what happens in the military, but it's sort of a common place hunting culture, and even bill clinton said -- i believe it was monday at the consumer electronics show. "i grew up in hunting culture, but this is nuts." you have people who are hunters, people in the military who use bushmaster rifles and understand what they are made for who are saying we've got to do something about this. >> it's important for people to understand just what these weapons are and what they're designed to do. you know, these weapons -- you know, we have very strict guidelines in the military in terms of what we can use a weapon for, which weapons we can use on a person versus a

vehicle, versus anything along those lines. these weapons that we're talking about, particularly the military style weapons, are not weapons that should be allowed anywhere near our society in temz of our humanity. these are instruments of death, and if people think that they belong on city streets, that's a whole other debail. >> do you think armed service men and women have the same view. do you think they see what happens in newtown and think -- i mean, obviously you can't speak for all of the armed services, but having served, do you think this thaeld agree with that? >> i think a lot probably don't. the fact is particularly when we look at, for example, i look at a city like baltimore, a city like philadelphia or chicago. the vast majority of gun crimes that we're talking about are not necessarily registered gun owners who are going out and buying weapons and such. the vast majority are these crimes are illegal guns. these are guns and the vast majority are handguns. baltimore city, for example, had 215 murders last year. about six of them were by assault weapons. all the rest were by handguns. the vast majority of them are

legal guns. i think even in terms of looking at assault weapons, high caliber magazines, et cetera, these are necessary things that we need to go after because they're not necessary. however, they're necessary, but the question is are they going to be sufficient to really reduce the gun violence? >> we know that there's been a raft of legislation been put on the floor. senator gran has issued a bill stopping gun trafficking. and background checks and high capacity magazines. jonathan, we word from a read-out at the white house that the president is going to be introducing his proposal to the president on tuesday. you know, how optimistic are we that we can tackle this problem either through congressional legislation or maybe through some version of executive power, although we don't know what that would be? >> this is the beginning of a movement. it's not about trying to pass a bill right now that will solve all the problems that wes raised. it's about building an effective counter force to the nra and

then beating them like a drum in the next election. now, they just added 100,000 members. they have 4.2 million. it's less than a kwaurlt of the names that obama has in his obama for america database. it's a tiny fraction of the aarp. i don't use gun control anymore because i -- you have a lot of people on the right side of this argument. they just haven't taken as seriously as the nra folks have. that's what has to change. they have to take their arguments about hitler and stalin into the 2014 election and get stomped in those suburban districts. they'll win the rural vote, but in the swing suburban districts where you have people with a lot of commonsense, if they get beat and beat bad and they -- democrats focus on these

districts not only can they get some gun control legislation, but they can get the house back. this is about the nuts and bolts of politics and developing a moment that it's the only thing that's ever caused change in this. >> why that's really important is that the nra wants us to fall into this trap of making this about a bill or making this about a restriction or a legislation. this is about much more than that. this is a much larger movement of not just the federal government and congress, but also of state legislatures. also municipalities, and also individual citizens who say enough. say the killing in our streets is absolutely unnecessary and it's unconscionable for us to -- >> i want to bring you back in here, colin, because as we're talking about grassroots movements, one of the things we witnessed last year, and this is why i think newtown is different, is there would be sort of the national discussion about the need to have better gun safety in this country, and it would seemingly die out, and that is not to undermine the efforts of the brady campaign, which have been noble, but perhaps not as -- not had the

numbers perhaps that the nra has had. newtown seems to be different. we are still talking about it a month later. there is a sense that the white house is actively engaged in this. how have you seen that translated as part of the brady campaign to grassroots support? >> i mean, our phones are still ringing off the hook still now a month out. i mean, so many new people are coming to us and saying how can i start a chapter and how can we start a march, how can i lobby my congressman? it's been great to see so many people that we now have to get back to. unless the american people are behind this, we're not going to see it done, and we're seeing the american people wake up finally. i think there are a number of reasons. just the general crescendo of mass shootings that we've seen. the beginning of that week of the shooting in newtown was a smoogt in a mall in oregon. i think also the fact that these are little kids strikes people's humanity in a much more central level. the fact that we've had new leadership at the brady campaign that's not gotten us in that policy fight from the get go, but we've turned out faced the american people and said you are the missing piece to this. if you keep up, if you engage

with us, if you sustain this energy, we will succeed, and the american people are doing it. keep it up. we're going to get this done. >> do you -- the nra is trying to reach five million by the end of this debate. do you guys have a number you want to hit? >> we want to double, triple our numbers. for the amount of -- they've got 100,000 people, whatever, since this debate started. we have had more than that, and we're still trying to count how many new people that is. we're just one organization among many who work on this. you know, this is really -- now that we have leadership from the white house, that can bring every group that works on gun policy together under one motivated common groel that will then get the people involved and the change that we need. >> colin goddard from the brady campaign, thank you for your time, and thanks for the insight. >> thanks for having me. >> coming up, if the debate over gun control wasn't sufficiently charged up enough, america's toughest sheriff joe arpayo, leader of the cold case posse, is putting together yet another motley cruel of foe-licemen. we will look at his plan for

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don't wait to feel great. miralax. >> the highest since 2006. the increasing largeness of these too big to fail banks is causing some to question whether the government has done enough to prevent another crisis similar to 2008. former labor secretary robert reich writes "the biggest wall street banks are now far bigger than they were four years ago when they were considered too big to fail. the five largest have almost 44% of all u.s. bank deposits. that is up from 37% in 2007. just before the crash." aig, the troubled insurance giant, which received $182

billion in bailout money, repeatly repaid the government in full even netting it a $22 billion profit. that has many believing the 2008 tarp program is an unrivalled success story, but in a new article for "rolling stone" the secrets and lies of the bailout, matt taibi says not so. "to listen to the bankers and their allies in washington tell it, you'd think the bailout was the best thing to hit the american economy since the invention of the assembly line. not only did it prevent another great depression we've been told, but the money has also all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. no harm, no foul, right? wrong. it was all a lie. one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the american people." joining us now is contributing editor at "rolling stone" matt taibi. matt, a great piece. a lot of research went into this. >> yep. >> a lot of plain speak. no b.s. attitude you have taken here. but in terms of it being the bailout being one of the biggest and most elaborate lies sold to the american populous, tell us

why you think so. >> the story started out as sort of a where are they now review of what the bailouts accomplished and what happened to the bailout recipients and what evolved into, as i did my research, was i found that there had been so many lies told in the course of the bailouts over the last four years and it became about what the bailout inspector calls the original sin of the bailout, which is there was a moment in time when the government decided that it was going to start lying on behalf of the banks. they were going to start calling unhealthy banks or insolvent banks solvent and healthy. that evolved into we're going to allow failing banks to pass stress tests. we're going to accept their phony accounting. then it became we're going to pretend they're not committing crimes by not prosecuting them. all of these different decisions, all of these little tiny deceptions, they were big deacceptings, but they all added up over time, and became what we have now, which is the implicit guarantee, which is sort of the

second bailout, ongoing bailout, where the entire market believes that the government is going to stand behind these two big to fail banks no matter what. >> especially given the fact that the banks will r no smaller than they were. i thought this was staggering. too big to regulate. america's six largest banks now have a combined 14,420 subsidiaries making them so big as to be effectively beyond regulation. a recent study by the can cab city fed said it would take 70,000 examiners -- talk about a jobs program -- to inspect such trillion-dollar banks with the same level of attention, normally given to a community bank. we are in some ways in a bores position than we were in 2007. >> right. absolutely. that was -- that gets back to the whole fiction of the bailouts. when we had the stress tests where they said, oh, we're only going to give money to healthy and viable banks and make sure we're doing this by doing these regular stress tests, well, it turns out that even the companies themselves don't know what's going on with their own accounting. when we saw this with the

episode last year with j.p. morgan chase when they had that london wales episode, they have no idea what's going on in their balance sheet. it if they don't know, we don't know, and, yet, we're 3ubically declaring them healthy, and what this does is send a signal to the markets that we're going to back them no matter what, and that's worth something economically, and it becomes kind of a second bailout. >> is that -- >> i was just going to say, one of the things that's always boggled my mind about the bailout is they were, in part, sold as a we to lubricate the real economy. that if the banks aren't healthy, then none of us will be too. if you look at the data as the size of the financial sector has gotten bigger, the number of firms being started has gotten smaller. you know, it's just amazing. did you see anything in your research about how that connection -- >> absolutely. look, this is another part of the deceptions under the bailout. there were all sorts of explicit promises made when we passed tarp the first time and the second time about increased lending. we would only give to banks that promised to lend above a certain

level. there were also promises made about foreclosure relief. very explicit promises. remember, the original bailout was not going to be the government was going to go buy up troubled mortgages and then they were going to allow people to modify them. >> that's how it got through congress. >> that's how it got through congress. they literally unilaterally disposed of that entire idea three or four days after the bailout passed. >> with your contention they dispos of that idea because they basically didn't care about it. sthoo they never cared about it. the people that administered the bailout were not really worried about foreclosures. this was not about saving people getting their houses foreclosed upon. this was about rescuing the people that tim geithner and larry summers who spent their entire lives around. these are the people that -- these wall street companies who were about to all go under if they didn't get billions and billions of dollars tomorrow, and that's what -- >> the political argument that would come from the white house, you hear this a lot when you talk to them privately, and they say publicly to a degree is that all the problems aside with the

bailout, they'll acknowledge that things didn't work well, that the mortgage rescue or leaf operations were really bad. that's one of the things that obama says is one of his big regrets of his first term, but putting all that aside, if you didn't prop up the system -- they were basically held hostage. if they didn't prop up the system in some form, all credit would sort of seize up and those start-ups that you would like to see would be even lower and that, yeah, we got into a mess where we're tied into this casino, crazy system, and if you -- but if you let it fall apart by not having these phony bailouts, it's even worse. i'm just wondering how you respond to something like that where. >> well, look, i understand that organize umt, and that is the argument they make. look, if we didn't do it, it would be worse. if we didn't call these unhealthy companies healthy -- >> you have them -- >> if you let them go under. >> the one thing that's amazing is the trend i'm talking about, that's been happening since the 1908s. as finance got bigger, the real economy got smaller, and that message has not gotten across.

i think one reason is that for every nine times somebody in finance is in talking to a congress person, maybe one time for the rest of america, so i think it's -- >> i think it's more like 100. >> let's also talk about the culture of wall street, which is really -- we talk about its roots being in the 1980s and gordon againingo. this -- i mean, wes, you have spent some time in the financial services industry. aig has a poeshl teshl lawsuit against the government saying the lending rate was too high. this is the federal government that reminder saved aig. it's also what wound into this narrative that david established or spoke to, which is that, look, we are the engine of america's economy. if you don't save us, the whole country is screwed, and you guys are nothing without us, and we're the guys that know what's going on, and so provide us a spokes screen, and we'll save the economy. in the sense that what is being done in wall street, which in some ways is not creating anything of any value. they're exotic financial instruments. that somehow -- >> it's bets piled on bets.

>> but that that is not sort of registered within the mind of your average investment banker. that they -- there is an outside sense of where they belong in terms of the american economy. >> well, and one of the interesting things i think we've seen, we start to see a shift in that. if you look at the reasons why people, you know, during the 1907s and 1980s why they wanted to join the finance industry. they felt that people working on really interesting and cool things are like that's where all the smart err people are going. can you make a ton of money at a very young age and do all this kind of stuff. one of the actual residuals of what i think we've seen since the financial crisis has been the amount of people who have actually stopped and taken a pause at that and started thinking about is this where i want to go? is this where i want to spend my time, or do i want to spend my time starting -- >> i think it's minuscule, though. if you look at the graduating class of harvard business school, for example, it might have been 39% to finance, maybe it's 36% now. i think that this trend is happening, but it's tiny, and why is it still tiny? guess what, if you are a high-tech person, if you graduate from m.i.t., 25% of the

class of m.i.t. goes to finance because they can do interesting things and come up with nine-dimensional models of how markets work rather than coming up with a solar car. >> they're not making anything. >> they're making things, but they're -- >> they're making money. >> you put some onus on the white house here in terms of not really prioritizing the programs that were supposed to help low income individuals, homeowners and the like, and gabe sherman in a piece in "new york magazine" last year talked about the de -- it was called the revolver. it was talking about go to citigroup. he notes the alliance among wall street, universities, and the white house is the military industrial complex of our time. there is such a cross pollination between these industries that to assume they're going to be able to free themselves from their previous ties that bound once they're in the white house it doesn't actually happen. >> i talk to a former s.e.c. investigator. the way he described it, he said it was like all the people that worked at the s.e.c. there are college guys waiting for their -- basketball players waiting for their first big nba contract. they know the instant they step

out of the s.e.c. they're going to get a $2 million or $3 million a year job at one of the defense firms that defends these big banks. how hard are they going to regulate these guys? they're not going to regulate them at all. that's what we've seen throughout this bailout era. they can step in and aggressively fix a problem or reform a problem. they didn't do it. the culture is all the same people. it's the same group of people on both sides of the aisle, and it's -- that's the problem. >> we also just got new sound from vice president joe biden following his violence task force meeting at the white house. some remarks for you after the break.

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vice president joe biden just finished up his latest gun violence task force meeting at the white house. he sat down with leaders from the sportsmen and wildlife interest groups and said is he committed to giving the president his recommendation by next tuesday. let's listen to more of what he said. >> there's an emerging set of recommendations not coming from me, but coming from the groups we've met, and i'm going to focus on the ones that relate primarily to gun ownership and the type of weapons that can be owned. one is there is a surprising -- so far -- a surprising recourage

of suggestions that we have universal background checks. >> that was joe biden at the white house. coming up next, america's toughest sheriff, joe arpajjo with his latest controversy, armed posses outside of schools. we will discuss that next. at 1:45, the aflac duck was brought in with multiple lacerations to the wing and a fractured beak. surgery was successful, but he will be in a cast until it is fully healed, possibly several months. so, if the duck isn't able to work, how will he pay for his living expenses? aflac. like his rent and car payments? aflac. what about gas and groceries? aflac. cell phone? aflac, but i doubt he'll be using his phone for quite a while cause like i said, he has a fractured beak. [ male announcer ] send the aflac duck a get-well card at getwellduck.com.

america's toughest and craziest sheriff joe arpajjo is back in the headlines again. this time he is heeding the call of the nra to make schools safer by putting more guns in them, or in this case near them. sheriff joe's program involves 400 to 500 armed volunteers, or posse members, patrolling outside of 59 phoenix area schools. david corn, can it get any crazier in arizona? >> it can, because you didn't tell the viewing public something that i know you know, that local media looked at some of the possible volunteers. >> these posse members? >> these posse members and found

they this criminal convictions, including sex offenses involving children. you'll put those people in cars with guns outside schools. great idea. >> wes, some of the parents were not made aware of this. i mean, there are interviews with local parents say ibt didn't know there were going to be volunteered armed -- volunteers with arms, not police officers, no one with any sort of jurisdiction in temz of law enforcement sitting on the side of my child's school with a weapon. >> and as if this in any way makes the children safer from what's happening. when are you putting these type of elements. it also goes back to the whole conversation about these gun loopholes. if you have people who are convicted felons, people who have sex offenses, et cetera, how are they getting their hands on guns in the first place? there are so many challenges and problems with the large err gun laws that we have in place, and sheriff joe is just completely exator baiting it and thumbing his nose at it as well. >> the thing is there are also going to be people who say grae great, now we need to get the people with the guns inside the school to protect our children. that's sort of the flip side of all of this.

>> we have a graph up that shows a number of guns, number of deaths by country, and so, you know, that's all you need to see. >> i like to know if sheriff joe is going to have them wearing pink underwear since that's what they used to do with the fellows that he had at his -- >> pink underwear. there are allegations of prison abuse, people who died under his watch in prison. but -- >> it would be amusing and you remember what he did with the birther movement where he spearheaded that after the president released his birth control -- his birth certificate. i'm mixing my issues. >> releasing birth control to everyone. that's different. >> sheriff joe can pull that off too. you know, it would be amusing if it weren't so disturbing. i mean, this guy is responsible for the public safety in the phoenix area, and -- >> shouldn't we just have enough cops paid for by taxpayers doing the right thing to protect kids wherever they may be, schools or malls, or whatever. this is a crazy, you know,

gimmicky shortcut. >> as you were saying in the break, wes, that sheriff joe has advocated that veterans fulfill these positions, people who have seen combat. who knows in f they're suffering from ptsd with the guns outside the schools? i mean, i would assume as a combat veteran, that's a very distasteful suggestion. >> also it's offensive. as if this is the only thing that veterans can do. we come back from iraq and afghanistan and the only thing we do is continue to hold your weapon ask stand guard. there are jobs programs that are needed for veterans. this ain't it. >> that's so true, my friend. we will leave it on that note. thank you to david corn, wes moore, ronna, and jonathan altar. i will see you back here tomorrow at noon eastern, 9:00 a.m. pacific when i am joined by chris hayes, governor ed rendell, bill burton, joye reid, buzz feed's ben smith, and actor jeffrey wright. until then, can you find us at facebook.com/now with alex. andrea mitchell reports is coming up next. to prove febreze can keep this car fresh, we loaded it with fast food, sweaty hockey gear, and a smelly dog cage.

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reports" jack of all trades. in a few minutes president obama will nominate chief of staff jack lew to be his next treasury secretary replacing timothy geithner. lew is going from a wall street and capitol hill favorite geithner it a budget cruncher not known for relationships with conservative republicans. >> he is knowledgeable. he works hard. he gets the job done and done right. he is a leader in every sense of that word. is he lib sflal you bet. is he more liberal than i am? you bet. he will offer the president his advice, but i guarantee you he is also a great soldier. the president makes a decision. jack lew will march forward. >> with lew's apointment to treasury, does the president need some binders full of women? >> the president believes that diversity is important because it -- having diversity increases the excellence of the pool of advisors around you, pool of the staff that you have